


Make Me Feel Human

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: Carter and Ryan share their scars.





	Make Me Feel Human

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to my prior fic [Crossing The River,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6072699/chapters/13918452) and references it a few times. It's not required reading, but it is highly recommended.

A road trip was just the thing Carter needed to clear his head. Captain Mitchell and Miss Fairweather (none of the Rangers, except Joel, were entirely comfortable with calling her ‘Angela’ yet, but at least she’d kept her name) had actually been pleased when Carter had gone to them, saying he intended to take some time off. After everything with Vanthiku, Carter had been very willing to take the time and go off duty. Based on precedent – not just Carter’s firsthand experience as a Ranger in rescuing Ryan, but also Vypra’s resurrection, Bansheera’s assault, Trakeena’s attempted revenge... All his time as a Ranger, and the precedent of what had come before, ever since the day Rita Repulsa had first attacked Angel Grove, all the way to the invasion led by Astronema... All of that evidence indicated that right now, Earth was in a typical downswing of attempted invasions.

There were always exceptions, of course - a few reports of some scattered monster sightings in some place called Turtle Cove, matched with claims of individual Power Rangers fighting them, a handful of rumors elsewhere - but the general consensus among those who defended Earth from giant monsters by dressing up in spandex bodysuits and fighting them with giant robots (a surprisingly large group of people, who were not considered crazy for doing so, no less) was that if there were a time to relax and take a break, hang the morpher on the wall, and hit the snooze button, this was the time to do it – reports from Silver Hills said that Ransik’s crusade against the Time Force Rangers and the 21st century had ended, with Wes and Eric now running the Silver Guardians and protecting the city in case any stragglers remained, and, rumors aside, right now, the Earth could breathe easy. What was out there was under control.

And, truth to tell, Carter would have taken this vacation now regardless. It gave him a chance to show Ryan the human world. He’d spent a good fifteen years among demons, and even in the time since Bansheera’s defeat, he hadn’t really explored much of what the human world had to offer. 

It was also a nice chance for the two of them to just spent time together. There’d been little time since they’d come back from Vanthiku’s realm to talk. He and Ryan had opted to first keep the change in their relationship quiet, at least for the moment. Ryan... he was still getting used to a lot of things about having a family again. While Carter felt confident that, particularly after getting him back after twenty years, Dana and Captain Mitchell were going to love and accept Ryan regardless of who he loved, they still hadn’t told them about the change in their relationship, letting Ryan become accustomed to the idea of having one before bringing others into it.

The dry thought of Carter and Ryan admitting their love for each other made Carter chuckle to himself. In truth, it was only a change in the sense that there were now kisses shared between them. They’d been taking things fairly evenly, having set out on a road trip after having recovered from their visit to Vanthiku’s realm. 

Carter had been letting Ryan set the pace of things since they’d returned – Ryan had grown up among demons, not humans, the last thing he needed was to have someone pushing him to go faster than he was ready for, especially when he didn’t fully know what was involved. It hadn’t taken long for Carter to register that, given those circumstances, Ryan hadn’t had a relationship, probably not even a genuine friendship before now. If anything, that alone was cause to take things slow. 

So far, they had certainly taken things slowly, all right. It had been about a month since they’d returned from Vanthiku’s realm, and Carter had mapped out a lazy route across the United States. Captain Mitchell and Dana had been understanding of Ryan wanting to go on this trip with Carter, though they’d clearly been disappointed that he was leaving Mariner Bay and them both yet again. For the better part of twenty years, they had thought Ryan was dead. Their wish to be closer to him had been obvious, even if Carter hadn’t know them so well.

Carter even wondered if he was, in a way, taking advantage of Ryan by doing this – Ryan hadn’t had time to really figure out and understand himself, and he was being thrust into this relationship. Though, considering that they’d both admitted that they were in love with each other in Vanthiku’s realm (in front of Vypra, of all people... Carter still resented her, and, remembering that she’d made a threat to return, anticipated that at some point, he’d have the chance to pay her back for that), he didn’t think it was truly taking advantage of him. Ryan was a grown man, capable of making his own decisions. The big concern, he supposed, was just the question of if Ryan understood all the choices he had – he had a wide world of options available to him, options that Diabolico and the demons in Bansheera’s realm would never have even let him contemplate if they’d known. 

They’d gone from Mariner Bay out towards the opposite coast, though they hadn’t yet reached it, due to the slow route that Carter had drawn up, allowing plenty of time to see the tourist traps and genuine attractions. One of the things that Lightspeed had always had going for it was the government contract – Carter would have saved the world without being paid, true, but it was nice to have the reserve. Their trip could afford to be as long and winding as it was because of what he’d had saved up. They were currently in a small motel in rural Illinois, relaxing after a day’s travel.

Well, Carter was relaxing. He’d noticed a tenseness in Ryan, something that had lingered as they’d made their way out of the coastal states, and it hadn’t eased since then. A tightness in his shoulders, a furrow in his brow... There was something about how he held himself that made Carter think that there was something he wasn’t saying. 

He hoped that he could ease Ryan’s burden. 

***

Ryan had been raised by demons. Not just metaphorical ones, but actual creatures of nightmare that saw humans as lesser creatures, worth no more consideration than ants. And who saw the presence of humans in the land they once called their own an infestation. Humans were nothing to demons. 

A human being raised among demons was never going to receive praise for being a good person. He had an uphill fight to be considered ‘acceptable’ in their eyes. Diabolico had never stroked his hair as he cried. Indeed, Diabolico had been the source of and cause of many of Ryan’s young tears, before he’d learned to simply not show any emotion around him, unless it was anger and fury. Those had earned him praise, approval that even at the time, had never sat right with Ryan. But it had been the way to survive, and, if there was one thing Ryan had picked up as the only human among demons, it had been that he must do what it took to survive. Diabolico might have had plans for him, but he’d been clear that he would change those plans if Ryan hadn’t proved strong enough, was destroyed by the way that demons simply interacted with one another. 

Though he was told to channel those emotions, the anger, the rage, the burning intense fury, towards the humanity that had claimed the demonic lands, it had frequently been directed towards Diabolico. Ryan had a feeling that Diabolico had known, even was pleased to think of that. 

Ryan would never not be pleased that the demon lord who had raised him was dead. 

Still... Now he was a part of a world that had never been a place that he knew. He was an outsider to being human. And all he was realizing from this road trip with Carter was how out of place he truly was. The happy families, the wandering tourists, the people who considered this world home... He felt like an intruder.

He wanted to make this work, for Carter’s sake, if nothing else. Carter wanted to love him. Ryan had spent much of the last year, since realizing his feelings for the Red Ranger were deeper than platonic, telling himself that Carter deserved to be with someone else, someone better connected to this world. That he should have this relationship that he clearly wanted with someone who wasn’t... tainted.

He still woke up at night, having dreamt of Diabolico coming to him, demanding him return to his service. That he would waver and return to the demons. Or that Diabolico, learning of Ryan’s feelings for Carter, would use the Red Ranger as leverage – ‘do my bidding or watch him die slowly.’ He knew they were dreams, recognized the difference between his own dreams telling him that Diabolico would make him pay for his betrayal of the demons and the feeling of being brought back to the demon’s lair. He awoke and reminded himself that Diabolico was gone, and he was not coming back this time. 

But the dreams were still there. Defeating Diabolico hadn’t caused them to fade away. If anything, after visiting Vanthiku’s realm, seeing the spirit of Diabolico there, acting as a guide for him and Carter... They’d gotten worse. As if his mind couldn’t allow him to rest, knowing that some aspect of Diabolico still lived, even if it was in the demonic wastelands. 

He wasn’t a demon. He’d never held any illusions of that kind. But he didn’t think he fit in with humanity. Could there really be a place for him in this world?

Dana, his father, Carter, the Rangers... They’d probably say yes. But they also all had lived in it, saw it as a place they belonged. They were part of it, and always had been. Ryan was... disconnected. He’d been raised with the demons. He didn’t know if he could live with humans.

***

It was the dead of night. Carter and Ryan had opted for separate beds for the time being – in addition to just not wanting to rush Ryan into thinking that they should take that step, Carter had spoken about some difficulties for people who were in relationships with the same sex, especially in this part of the nation, which, Ryan supposed, meant that humans and demons weren’t all that different, if they could divide how they viewed humanity by way of love, the thing that supposedly separated the two groups.

Still, despite not sharing the same bed, Carter had gotten attuned to the sound of Ryan sleeping, the gentle rhythm of the other man breathing across from him (motel rooms being as small as they were, even before both the instincts of a firefighter and a Power Ranger, had him able to notice some small disturbance). Ryan had been the one consistency on their road trip (that and drive-thru food that Carter could hear his old fire chief admonishing him for putting in his body). 

That was why hearing his breathing jump jolted Carter awake just before Ryan himself woke up. Ryan didn’t jolt up in bed, but Carter could hear him shifting as he tried to get his breathing back under control. He considered letting Ryan just go back to sleep, on the idea that nightmares happened to the best of them, even if they didn’t have the added burden from being a Power Ranger. 

But this wasn’t the first time Ryan had been woken up with a nightmare over the last few weeks. If anything, the nightmares seemed to have been increasing in their frequency. Once the first week, and increasingly since. This had happened the last two nights as well.

“Ryan? You okay?”

A pause. “I’m fine, Carter.”

So, he could accept Ryan at his word. Let things stay as they had been so far. He could believe that Ryan had things under control. And doing that would be to deny the reality of the situation. Because this was going to keep happening, Carter knew. Whatever was wrong with Ryan, whatever was waking him up so violently, had only gotten worse. He hadn’t asked for help dealing with it, but it was clear that whatever the cause, it wasn’t going away in Ryan’s current taciturn way of dealing with it.

It wasn’t much of a decision.

“Whatever you’re dreaming of, it’s clearly not fine. This isn’t the first time you’ve woken up like that,” he said. He could have simply demanded that Ryan speak to him about this, but he felt he should give Ryan the chance to talk about it on his own. 

For a moment, Ryan was silent. Carter was afraid that he’d pushed him at a point where he wasn’t going to open any further, that he’d hit against Ryan’s walls and made him just reinforce those walls, rather than let them down. 

Then he heard Ryan sigh. “My childhood was a nightmare. I just didn’t recognize it at the time. So when I dream... What I dream is from that. Diabolico’s there. Vypra, Loki, Jinxer... Even Olympius and Bansheera, sometimes.”

Carter stopped himself from just saying outright that they were just dreams – even if they were only the PTSD dreams of a Power Ranger no longer on active duty, there was nothing ‘just’ about them, considering that they had enemies who were willing to attack them in the dead of night. Ryan had been attacked by Diabolico as he’d slept, that had been how he’d placed the snake tattoo on him in the first place. And that was just the one occasion he knew about – Carter had wondered more than once if Diabolico or any of the others had made their presences known to Ryan during his search for the key to the tomb.

“What do they do to you?” Carter knew that there was a good chance the answer could leave him as the one with nightmares – demons inflicting their ideas of ‘discipline’ on a child could only be horrific, there simply weren’t any other words for it. 

Ryan took a moment, as if debating if he wanted to tell Carter the truth. That just made Carter more sure that, even if he spoke about anything he’d been through in the demon’s realm, it would be just the tip of the iceberg. Humans weren’t meant for a realm of demons. 

“It all... It was normal for me. I mean, my father... He was a good man, but... Living in the demon realm, I had to bury those memories. I had to accept that I’d never go back to that life. There were times that... I felt like the time that I’d spent as a human, among humans, that it was just a dream. That I’d always been there, in their realm.” He paused, maybe expecting that he was scaring Carter off with this, but Carter was still listening, waiting for... 

As it sank in that Carter was truly listening, was waiting for the worst, Ryan sighed again, reluctant to go into detail, but still... Now that Carter was pushing, it was almost as if he needed to say this. “Punishments were harsh, and praise was... rare. It... I learned early that I was disposable. I was alone. There was no life there that was anything like me, and I was... The physical punishments were bad, even though Diabolico had Jinxer patch me up afterwards. But the loneliness... Sometimes that was worse. Because it was the only world I really knew, and I knew... I was alone. That being human... In that place, it was a weakness.”

Carter shuddered at the thought. Even if Ryan had been a grown man at the time, that would still have qualified as torture under every definition he knew of. To a child... There were depths to what Ryan had been through he probably had no idea even qualified as trauma. Carter suddenly wished that there were some sort of Power Ranger therapist – even considering that, unlike many of the other teams of Power Rangers out there, the Lightspeed Rangers weren’t bound by keeping their identities protected, there just wasn’t the training to deal with this. Not to any significant detail, at any rate – effectively, Rangers had to act as therapists to one another, no matter how little psychology they had studied. No one else truly could grasp the magnitude of the things they went through – soldiers might fight in other countries, Power Rangers regularly had to fight in other planes of existence. 

Having no idea what else to do, Carter pulled himself out of his bed, moving over to Ryan’s, allowing him to put a comforting hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You’re not there anymore. You’re not alone. You have a whole world of humanity around you.”

“That’s... still hard to believe. I don’t feel like it’s a world for me.” Ryan struggled to think how to describe it – the difference seemed to be like describing color to someone who’d never had sight. 

For a moment, Carter was quiet. Then he shifted, allowing him to lay on Ryan’s bed. “Ryan? Can we try something, if you’re willing?”

Ryan twisted, looking to him. “What?”

“Come on. Lie down.” Carter patted the bed beside him, indicating where Ryan should be. Uncertain, but seemingly willing to trust him, Ryan did as indicated. He looked to Carter to see if he was in the right position, lying on his back. With what he hoped was a comforting smile, Carter pulled Ryan up against him, wrapping an arm around him.

It hadn’t been something that the other man had expected, obviously, so Carter gave him a moment to react. For a brief moment, Ryan tensed, likely feeling confined. But Carter could also feel the way he relaxed as he recognized that he was safe in Carter’s arms. “You okay?”

A moment of silence. Then Carter felt Ryan sigh. “Yeah. Yeah.” One of his hands tentatively covered Carter’s own.

“You’re here. You’re in this world. You will always have a place here, no matter what. What you went through... Ryan, you’re still one of the best people I know. You may have been raised in the world of demons, but you belong here.” He gently pressed a kiss to the back of Ryan’s neck. “And I don’t just mean with me, you know.” Not that he wanted to approach the idea of Ryan not being with him, but he did want Ryan to feel like he was with Carter by choice, not because he was his one way to feel connected to humanity. “You can find something – anything – that can connect you to this world, you know. And I’ll be there with you, as long as you want me to.”

He felt Ryan’s steady breathing under his hands, felt the way that Ryan’s hand clung to his own. He could feel a touch of the tension start to dissipate – not all of it, not that he’d expected it to just fade away completely with a few words of encouragement. Still, the important part was that Ryan believed him. 

“I want you there, Carter.” Carter could hear his smile, even if his angle didn’t let him see it. “I haven’t exactly said it, but... The idea of having... this with you... I was scared of it. Because I didn’t think I deserve it.” Ryan paused for a moment, then shifted so that he could look Carter in the eye, managing to silence the reflexive protest from the other man. “And I know. You get to make that decision. I know. But it always felt as if you shouldn’t have to. Because being close to me would... hold you back from the happiness you deserved. It’s the fear, the fear that Diabolico and the others... tainted me.”

Again, Carter’s heart broke for Ryan. If Diabolico and Bansheera weren’t already dead, he’d kill them again. If it weren’t for Vanthiku’s warning about returning to the demonic underworld, he might have thought about going there for a minute and finding them, see what happens when you kill an already dead demon. 

“You’re not tainted. Scarred, maybe, but... Everyone has their own.”

Ryan looked at him, curious. “Tell me about yours.” He hesitated, realizing that just asking for that was probably rude. “I mean... if you’re willing to talk about them.”

Carter couldn’t help but chuckle at the swift realization that he’d sounded like he was making a demand. “It’s only fair. I know all about your scars, but you’ve never really been around to hear about mine.” He’d been there when Carter had learned that it had been Captain Mitchell who had inspired him to become a firefighter, but... Well, that wasn’t really a scar. It wasn’t as if Carter didn’t have any skeletons in his closet.

That was, actually, a solid place to start. Carter was the one who took a deep breath this time. “Well...” He readied himself, having put this mostly behind emotional barriers – this was one of those rare things that he kept mostly to himself, “How much have you heard about how things have been for... people who are attracted to the same sex?”

“Some. I know about... people using religious justifications to say that it’s wrong.” Ryan scowled, clearly not impressed at the idea. 

“You read anything about the AIDS crisis?” What had been a major factor in the world Carter had grown up in was now something that needed to be explained as to why it mattered. He liked to think that was progress.

The confusion was evident on Ryan’s face – not surprising, given the seeming oxymoron of the name, and the fact that you really had to look for the information more often than not to find out about it. Carter sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t remember anything about it, given...” Given how young he’d been when Diabolico took him. Carter didn’t exactly want to bring him up. “And a lot of people just... don’t want to talk about it.”

As Carter gave a brief overview of what had happened back in the eighties, the way that gay people had become pariahs because of a disease that disproportionately affected them, he saw Ryan’s scowl grow deeper at the idea – sometimes, in the course of human history, it was hard to tell the difference between them and the demons.

“Things are... improving. Slowly, but...” Well, Carter couldn’t exactly say it was wholly better – they’d be lucky if they only got dirty looks from people if they were to walk out of this room, hand in hand. But he remembered a time where it would have been akin to signing their death warrants to do it publicly anywhere, so...

With the background now clear for Ryan, Carter sighed. Now he had to explain why that had mattered. “So, that was the cloud hanging over anyone who was gay or bi and wanted to live openly when I was a kid.” He hesitated for a moment, some part of him still reluctant to bring this up. “I was thirteen when Bobby Thompson told me that he liked me. As more than just a friend. And... I told him to stay away from me. Called him a freak.”

Ryan blinked, not having expected that from Carter. “You did?” It didn’t sound like the Carter who had led the Lightspeed Rangers, even accepting that teenagers and grown men were different. And it was hard to picture Carter as anything other than a fully-grown man.

“I know, I... The only excuse I can offer is that it was the first time I was faced with it, and I handled it... badly.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I was scared and confused about myself, because... I did like him back. But this was still when all I knew about gay people is that they were “diseased.” It’s not much of an excuse, but...” He looked to the ceiling, as if for once he couldn’t meet Ryan’s gaze. “It didn’t help that, being bi, I still had feelings for girls, making me more confused. I didn’t even start to untangle that for... years. Pretty much took the first major alien invasion to put it all into focus. If you’re facing annihilation from evil space aliens, a sexuality crisis doesn’t seem so important. But... I never did get to apologize to Bobby.”

“Why not?”

That made Carter hesitate. “When we were sixteen, he... Well, what everyone told us was that he and his family moved out of town. But... Something always seemed like... like the adults weren’t saying something. That they were keeping something quiet.”

“So... you think he might have...”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he’d been attracted to someone else who’d... reacted worse than I did, or if he’d been outed by someone, or even if his family had thrown him out... I don’t know. I never found out. No one told me, but I also... I never asked. I never tried to dig deeper into why he’d just... dropped off the map. I... I suppose I’ve always been afraid of the answer, that he might have...” Carter sighed. “So, that’s my scar. I hurt someone who cared about me, and have never been able to apologize for it.”

Ryan was quiet for a long moment, considering it. “Were you... responsible for his family moving out of town?”

“No, I... I kept it quiet, even though I put distance between us. I didn’t tell anyone, which... I guess that makes it seem a little better, in that... I wasn’t the direct cause of him leaving, or anything happening to him, but... The way I treated a friend, the way that I acted as if he was wrong for... well, being like I am... I don’t know if I even would have ever felt like he did in the first place, being too confused about how I felt overall, but... And I can’t help but feel like I might have put him in trouble, because I rejected him.” The man he was now would have stood up and defended that boy. Carter just knew that it was only because his younger self hadn’t that he’d become the man who would.

“If you didn’t have any responsibility in what happened to him, if anything did, though...”

“Because I hurt someone who cared about me, who I called a friend. Because I was scared of being different, and I knew that returning how he felt would do that. Because I contributed to someone feeling even more alone in the world than they already were.” Carter hadn’t spoken about Bobby Thompson in years. Maybe he should look him up, try to find out if his fears had been justified, or if he’d just been paranoid over nothing, and it had simply been that Bobby and his family had moved because of something like a family emergency or a job change, something that had nothing to do with Bobby being gay. 

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. “For what it’s worth, Carter... You’re a good man. You’ve... given me a chance, when... I didn’t feel like I deserve it.”

“You have, Ryan. You’ve deserved all the happiness you were denied by Diabolico and his cronies.”

That got a chuckle from Ryan. “So you’ve been determined to hammer into my thick skull. I... I’m getting there. It’s a process, but... You may have made mistakes in the past, but... Well, I think you’ve done a lot of good, too.”

Carter couldn’t help but smirk at that. “Take some of your own advice, then. Because you may have been raised in the demon realm, but you’re still human. And you made the choice to turn your back on what they tried to beat into you. You’re a good man, Ryan Mitchell. And don’t you forget it.”

“I get the feeling you wouldn’t let me if I tried,” Ryan said, breaking into a genuine smile. 

“True.”

They rested in a comfortable silence. Ryan reached up, cupping Carter’s face as a soft smile touched his lips. “Thank you, Carter. For not letting me forget it. I... I’m lucky to have you in my life.”

Carter reached up and took Ryan’s hand in his own. “Me too. I love you, Ryan.”

“I love you too.”

Ryan pulled close to Carter, causing Carter to roll to his back and allowing Ryan to burrow against Carter’s side, slipping back towards sleep.

There were no more nightmares that night.


End file.
